The Democratic Party used to be the party of blue collar America- supporting laws and policies that benefitted that segment of the U.S. population. Their leaders may still claim to be advocates for American working families, however their duplicitous actions that betray American workers and their families, while undermining national security and public safety, provide clear and incontrovertible evidence of their lies…. MICHAEL CUTLER …FRONTPAGE mag

Monday, January 4, 2016

AMERICAN IS SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY DYING. WE HAVE ONLY TO LOOK AT THE NUMBER OF COP MURDERS ACROSS THE NATION FOR A GLIMPSE.CITIES ARE GOING UNDER, AND YET WE SQUANDER BILLIONS IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS AND MUSLIM DICTATORSHIPS.

Interior Enforcement Disintegrates Further in 2015: Year-end deportation statistics show continuing drop in deportations By CIS, December 2015 http://cis.org/Interior-Enforcement-2015-DeportationsExcerpt:The number of interior deportations is now less than one-third of what it was in 2011, before the Obama administration implemented policy changes that greatly restricted the types of cases that ICE officers and agents could pursue for deportation. The number of criminal alien deportations from the interior is less than half of what it was in 2011.ICE Director Sarah Saldana said that she was "proud of the numbers" when she testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on December 2, 2015.

In a press release announcing the numbers today, DHS falsely says "the number of convicted criminals removed from the interior continued to increase." In fact, only the share of deportations that are of criminals has increased – the actual number has fallen, as noted above.In September, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said, “We take seriously our obligation to secure our borders.” No one believes that — especially not Central Americans thinking about coming to the United States.DHS’s Deportation Announcement Is ‘Fundamentally a Political Exercise’By Mark Krikorian

This was the start of the lead story on the Washington Post’s Christmas Eve front page:

The Department of Homeland Security has begun preparing for a series of raids that would target for deportation hundreds of families who have flocked to the United States since the start of last year, according to people familiar with the operation.

As I told the reporter, I’ll believe it when I see it. A few further thoughts:

Why now? The surge of Central Americans across the border — both adults with kids in tow (who are the subjects of this latest leak) and the “unaccompanied” “minors” who got so much coverage — subsided after the summer of 2014 because the administration bribe-threatened Mexico into doing a better job of policing its own southern border. But now there’s a renewed surge, presumably because Mexico’s zeal is waning and because Central Americans see that the U.S. isn’t deporting many of those who came earlier. Heck, even deportations of criminals are dropping. Border Patrol statistics show the magnitude of this new surge. In the first two months of the current fiscal year (October and November), border apprehensions of unaccompanied minors were more than double those in the same period last year, and apprehensions of “family units” nearly triple. If the rate continues, the flow of minors will approach the 2014 peak, and the flow of families will exceed it.

In itself, the White House may not consider that a problem, given the administration’s implicit belief that these people have a right to come here. But there’s an election in about 10 months, and not many voters share the Obama crowd’s anti-borders views. That’s why my colleague Dan Cadman notes that “the plan is fundamentally a political exercise.” The Democrats will gather in Philadelphia in late July for Herself’s coronation, and it could prove awkward for her if a renewed surge of illegals across the border is still in the news. Herself’s silence in response to the news of the planned raids, contrasted with Sanders’s and O’Malley’s fulminations against them, suggests she’s in on the whole thing.

Making the border-surge story go away will be one of DHS’s main election-year priorities.

So why the leak? It might seem odd to announce the onset of “raids” that haven’t even been given final approval yet. It could be a trial balloon, a planned leak to gauge public reaction. But more plausible is the theory that I’ve heard from moles inside DHS: A senior official leaked the news specifically to outrage Obama’s leftist base in an effort to prevent the deportations from ever happening.

In immigration matters, the fox guards the henhouse in this administration, from former La Raza VP Cecilia Muñoz directing policy in the White House to former police chief of San Francisco — San Francisco — Heather Fong in charge of DHS dealings with state and local law enforcement (and on the short list to become the next head of the Border Patrol). It is perfectly plausible that one of the many anti-borders zealots appointed to jobs in DHS figured that stopping the deportation of illegal aliens is more important than giving Herself political cover going into the November election.Will it work? The short answer is “no.” The Post reports that the “number targeted is expected to be in the hundreds and possibly greater.” Hundreds? The illegal-alien families are coming across the border at a rate of about 200 per day, and more than 100,000 have come over the past couple of years. Even if these deportations actually happen, a few hundred is a drop in the bucket and isn’t going to make much of an impression on people in Central America debating whether to head out for the United States.

What does make in impression is news from friends and relatives that they’re all being allowed to stay. When illegals bringing kids with them are apprehended, almost all are released with a notice (which they call a “permiso” or permit to be in the U.S.) instructing them to present themselves on such-and-such a date. It should come as no surprise that few do so. Data from earlier this year show that the overwhelming majority of illegal-alien families just ignore their hearing dates (look for “Absconded from Proceedings“ in Table 1) — and get away with it.

Even the administration’s efforts to dissuade people from coming have backfired. DHS has been running public-service announcements in Central America warning people not to come because new arrivals are not eligible for Obama’s various unilateral amnesties. They advise that “there are no permits for the people trying to cross the border without papers” and warn of “immediate deportation of those trying to cross the border without documents.” But Hondurans et al. aren’t idiots — their friends and relatives in the U.S. have told them, accurately, that there are permits for people crossing without papers and that there’s no immediate deportation of people from their countries. The lack of credibility earned by such obvious lies means that it will be doubly hard to change the perceptions of prospective illegals.

What to do? There are steps we could take if we actually wanted to stop the surge, though there’s little chance Obama’s minions would even consider them. Congress has authorized “expedited removal” for illegals under certain circumstances, allowing them to be removed without having to go before an immigration judge. This would apply to most of the illegals in question, but Obama’s not using this authority.

Expedited removal doesn’t apply to illegals who seek to avoid deportation by claiming asylum. But even here there’s a first cut, called a “credible fear” determination, to weed out people who shouldn’t even be put in the pipeline for a full evaluation of their claims, allowing their expeditious removal. The problem is that under Obama almost everyone makes the first cut — and few are detained pending the resolution of their claims — so that all you need to say is “asylum,” and you get to stay.

Most basically, an administration could simply force Mexico to take back people who just minutes before crossed through their territory into ours. Mexico is cooperative in receiving back its own citizens who are arrested by the Border Patrol, but not with regard to OTMs (Other Than Mexicans). That means we have to either detain them or let them go and hope they show up for their hearings.

But Canada takes back non-Canadians trying to sneak across our border, and Mexico sends non-Guatemalan Central Americans back across its own southern border with Guatemala. A president interested in controlling illegal immigration would insist on this. Nor should an asylum claim preclude return across the border; genuine asylum seekers would ask for it in the first country they reach, meaning Central Americans should be required to apply in Mexico, not here.

In September, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said, “We take seriously our obligation to secure our borders.” No one believes that — especially not Central Americans thinking about coming to the United States.326,000 Native-Born Americans Lost Their Job in November: Why This Remains the Most Important Jobs Chart By Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge.com, December 5, 2015
. . .
We are confident that one can make the case that there are considerations on both the labor demand-side (whether US employers have a natural tendency to hire foreign-born workers is open to debate) as well as on the supply-side: it may be easier to obtain wage-equivalent welfare compensation for native-born Americans than for their foreign-born peers, forcing the latter group to be much more engaged and active in finding a wage-paying job.

However, the underlying economics of this trend are largely irrelevant: as the presidential primary race hits a crescendo all that will matter is the soundbite that over the past 8 years, 2.7 million foreign-born Americans have found a job compared to only 747,000 native-born. The result is a combustible mess that will lead to serious fireworks during each and every subsequent GOP primary debate, especially if Trump remains solidly in the lead.

FrontPageMag.com, December 4, 2015
. . .Therefore the Visa Waiver Program should have been terminated after the terror attacks of 9/11 yet it has continually been expanded.

It is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of administrations and many members of Congress, irrespective of political party affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no meaningful action to stop that flow of aliens into the United States.
. . .
The obvious question is why the Visa Waiver Program is considered so sacrosanct that even though it defies the advice and findings of the 9/11 Commission no one has the moral fortitude to call for simply terminating this dangerous program.

The answer can be found in the incestuous relationship between the Chamber of Commerce and its subsidiary, the Corporation for Travel Promotion, now doing business as Brand USA.

The Chamber of Commerce has arguably been the strongest supporter of the Visa Waiver Program, which currently enables aliens from 38 countries to enter the United States without first obtaining a visa.

The U.S. State Department provides a thorough explanation of the Visa Waiver Program on its website.

Incredibly, the official State Department website also provides a link, “Discover America,” on that website which relates to the website of The Corporation for Travel Promotion, which is affiliated with the travel industries that are a part of the “Discover America Partnership.”

Immigration Enforcement as Political Football By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, December 28, 2015
. . .
According to the story, the plan has been kicked around exhaustively in the upper echelons of the administration for some time, with no final decision being made. My own take is that the story was deliberately leaked by administration officials as a trial balloon to gauge public reaction to the proposal. And, although the media suggest that the idea emanated below, either at DHS or its subordinate agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which would undertake the raids, that idea is beyond laughable. The leaders at all levels of DHS and its subordinate agencies are minions selected by the White House for their pliability. If this plan emanated anywhere, it arose from politicos at the highest levels who have their eye on the upcoming presidential election.
. . .
But there's this pesky perception that Democrats are weak on immigration enforcement, something that has become increasingly unpalatable to the public in light of the now undeniable connection between immigration and matters of terrorism and national security, so disastrously highlighted in France and the rest of Europe with its runaway migrant crisis and infiltration by jihadists.

So what to do to win back the independents and centrists? "Hey! I've got an idea! Let's get tough on a tiny segment of the illegal population, one that will look like we're really doing something! Let's have some raids on those scofflaws we let in a year ago last summer who didn't even bother to go to their court hearings. They're expendable. Besides, it will send a message back to Central America that they still haven't gotten: no more surges! At least, not until after the election, for God's sake."

If one were to accept the idea that the plan is fundamentally a political exercise, and that it was floated by way of a leak to prepare the public (and the small but outraged base of open borders advocates) for what will follow, then the reactions of the other two significant Democratic candidates was what Louisianans would call "lagniappe" – that little extra something, the gravy on the rice, the icing on the cake. Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley, both of whom have irritated the DNC to no end with their accusations of favoritism, took the bait and immediately leapt into the rhetorical fray to denounce the proposed raids. By contrast, The Hill newspaper tells us, "Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has been more cautious than Sanders or O'Malley with regard to immigration policy in general, has not commented on the reported deportation raids."
. . .http://www.cis.org/cadman/immigration-enforcement-political-football

President Obama is dropping a New Year’s Eve bomb on the nation’s best and brightest workers.
. . .
What can be done to stop this?

As I noted on Twitter two weeks ago, a new bill co-sponsored by longtime reformer Sen. Jeff Sessions and GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz would not only restore U.S. worker protections in the flawed H-1B program, but would also prevent “continued use of the non-statute-based Optional Practical Training (OPT) Program, and the creation and use of other similar programs, which have also been used to displace American workers under the guise of student training.”

Good to know there are at least two Senators on Capitol Hill who aren’t snoozing while President Obama tries to throw U.S. high-skilled workers and talented U.S. college grads under the bus in the dark of the last night of 2015.

Obama Floods The U.S. Job Market With Foreign Competition
Investors Business Daily, December 31, 2015

Politics: Skirting Congress once again, President Obama seeks to admit another 100,000 foreigners to work here when jobs are few and labor-market participation is low. Whatever this is, it's not in the interest of U.S. workers.

This time, the president isn't seeking to flood the country with tens of thousands of indigent, border-surging migrants in search of bigger benefits packages.

Instead, he plans to award via executive order work permits to 100,000 foreign college grads (including deportable aliens) to compete with U.S. workers for jobs.
. . .
The move is especially nefarious not just because it stands as another example of executive overreach but also because foreign workers already have U.S. workers at a disadvantage.

For one thing, they're able to work cheaper. Unlike Americans, most have had free tuition rides from their sponsoring countries and carry no student loan debt. This enables them to tolerate lower wages than American grads saddled with high loan costs that can't be shirked even in bankruptcy court.

The foreigners are also exempt from ObamaCare rules that can add as much as $20,000 in costs per domestic worker for employers struggling to compete in the low-growth economy that Obama has overseen.

The agency’s own statistics certainly contradict that, showing that the southern border region is as porous and vulnerable as ever. Other entry ports that saw large hikes in Central American illegal immigrants during the first two months of this fiscal year include Del Rio, Texas (269%), El Centro, California (216%) and Rio Grande Valley, Texas (154%). The Border Patrol breaks the stats down by “family unit” and illegal immigrants under the age of 18, referred to as “Unaccompanied Alien Children” or UAC. The Rio Grande Valley port of entry topped the list in both categories with 8,537 family units and 6,465 UACs during the two-month period. In all, the nation’s nine southern border crossings saw an average of 173% increase in family units and a 106% increase in minors during the short period considered.

Some of the illegal immigrants are Mexican nationals, but the overwhelming majority comes from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The government records show that somehow 4,450 family units from El Salvador evaded our topnotch border security and entered the United States in a period of only two months. Guatemala and Honduras had 3,934 and 3,203 respectively. Mexico had 538 family units. Of interesting note is that, during this period, the Border Patrol reports 35,234 apprehensions in the region of foreigners labeled by the government as “Other Than Mexican” or OTM. This is a term used by federal authorities to refer to nationals of countries that represent a terrorist threat to the U.S.
. . .http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/12/surge-in-illegal-aliens-500-increase-in-some-u-s-ports-of-entry/

Suicidal Liberalism Will Never End Illegal Immigration
By Heather MacDonald
Frontpagemag.com, December 31, 2015
. . .
Why is the Secure Communities program and the opposition to it so significant? Its ultimate goal is to delegitimate deportation entirely as a response to illegal entry. Conservatives have let themselves get sort of hung up on the issue of the fence. They talk exclusively about we've got to build a fence and if you notice the Left doesn't really push back very hard against the fence. Why? Because the Left understands that far more important than the fence is this delegitimation of deportation because even if we build a fence there's always going to be people who get through. The issue is what happens next.

The Left is so confident that it is starting with the hardest case. It is saying, even an illegal alien criminal should not be deported. If you can't deport somebody in the country illegally, any formal immigration policy is an absolute nullity because the only penalty for illegal entry is deportation. It is the only penalty that actually responds to the law breaking.

I've never heard the Left actually disclose what it thinks should be an appropriate and legitimate response to illegal entry. But for the sake of argument, let's postulate that the Left would agree somebody's in the country illegally. There should be a penalty. The Left would say that penalty will be paying a fine. If that is the penalty, that is no deterrent at all. It just simply becomes the cost of illegal entry.
. . .http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261272/suicidal-liberalism-will-never-end-illegal-frontpagemagcom

The Daily Signal, December 29, 2015
. . .
Though the official could not comment on the nature of the compliance due to the ongoing litigation, Rosenblum and other immigration experts say the government is detaining families for less time, releasing them in three weeks or less to pursue their asylum claims in immigration court.

Chris Cabrera, the vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for Border Patrol agents, told The Daily Signal that immigrants from Central America seem to be responding to the new detention procedures.

“I would say it’s a major reason we’re having the surge because people know we won’t detain them and are going to release them,” said Cabrera, who is a Border Patrol agent stationed in McAllen, Texas.

Cabrera said the women and children usually seek out the Border Patrol, rather than hide from them, to ask for asylum protection. He said nearly all of them are claiming they have a credible fear of returning to their home country.

BARACK OBAMA AND PAUL RYAN PARTNER FOR OPEN BORDERS, NO CAPS ON FOREIGN INVADERS, AND NO LEGAL NEED APPLY.KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED WITH ENDLESS HORDES OF IMMIGRANTS KEEPS THEIR PAYMASTERS HAPPY AND PROFITABLE!IT ALSO FINISHES OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS!

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Ryan defends raised visa caps in spending bill

Ryan defends raised visa caps in spending bill

Washington Examiner

The Federal Register will publish a new Department of Homeland Security regulation Thursday that instructs the State Department to give millions of employment authorization documents to aliens prior to authorizing green cards.The new regulation was designed to override current visa caps outlined in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952."This is a backdoor plan to circumvent Congress and bust immigration caps, executed during a time of record immigration, lowering wages and eliminating jobs for Americans," an anonymous Senate staffer told the Washington Examiner.The move comes after a discovery earlier this year that the Obama administration had printed up millions of work permits to issue to people who are in the country illegally.

"During the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires surged past $7 trillion and the top 1 percent now controls half of the world’s wealth."Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.

"In the sphere of world economy, any expectation of an upturn has given way to the reality of permanent crisis. In the United States, six years into the so-called economic “recovery,” real unemployment remains at near-record highs, wages are under attack, and health care and pensions for millions of Americans are being wiped out."

"The essential and intended consequence of government policy over the past seven years has been to vastly increase social inequality. During the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires surged past $7 trillion and the top 1 percent now controls half of the world’s wealth. In the US, the scale of social inequality—and therefore political inequality—is so great that one recent scientific study concluded that “the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt."

On the threshold of the New Year

31 December 2015

As the year 2015 ends, a general mood of fear and foreboding predominates in ruling circles. It is hard to find a trace of optimism. Commentators in the bourgeois media look back on the past year and recognize that it has been a year of deepening crisis. They look forward to 2016 with apprehension. The general sense in government offices and corporate boardrooms is that the coming year will be one of deep shocks, with unexpected consequences.

The Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman gives expression to this pervasive feeling in his end-of-the-year assessment published on Tuesday. “In 2015, a sense of unease and foreboding seemed to settle on all the world’s power centers,” he writes. “All the big players seem uncertain—even fearful.” China “feels much less stable.” In Europe, the mood is “bleak.” In the US, public sentiment is “sour.”
Significantly, Rachman singles out as the “biggest common factor” in the world situation “a bubbling anti-elite sentiment, combining anxiety about inequality and rage about corruption that is visible in countries as different as France, Brazil, China and the US.” This observation reflects a growing recognition within the corporate media that the coming period will be one of immense social upheavals.

Rachman’s comment and others like it that have appeared in recent days confirm the assessment made by the World Socialist Web Site during the first week of 2015. The intervals between the eruption of major geopolitical, economic and social crises have “become so short that they can hardly be described as intervals,” we wrote. Crises “appear not as isolated ‘episodes,’ but as more or less permanent features of contemporary reality. The pattern of perpetual crisis that characterized 2014—an essential indicator of the advanced state of global capitalist disequilibrium—will continue with even greater intensity in 2015.”

In defending its rule, the ruling class seeks to cover over the reality of capitalism beneath a mass of lies and hypocrisy. War is cloaked in the language of freedom and democracy; antisocial domestic policy is portrayed as the pursuit of equality and freedom. But—and this is characteristic of a period of crisis—more and more, the essential nature of capitalism—a system of exploitation, inequality, war and repression—comes into alignment with the everyday experiences of broad masses of people. Illusions are dispelled; the essence appears.

In the sphere of world economy, any expectation of an upturn has given way to the reality of permanent crisis. In the United States, six years into the so-called economic “recovery,” real unemployment remains at near-record highs, wages are under attack, and health care and pensions for millions of Americans are being wiped out. Europe is growing at less than 2 percent a year, and large parts of the European economy—including Greece, the target of brutal austerity measures demanded by the European banks—are in deep recession. China, presented as a possible engine of world economic growth, is slowing sharply. Brazil and much of Latin America are in deep slump. Russia is in recession.

BLOG: OBAMA'S CRONY BANKSTERS HAVE BEEN BUSY BEAVERS SINCE THE LAST MELTDOWN THEY CAUSED!

Meanwhile, the easy-money policy of the world’s central banks has produced a new wave of speculative investment, centered in junk bonds and other forms of debt, which is beginning to unravel in a process that parallels the crisis in subprime mortgages prior to 2008.

The essential and intended consequence of government policy over the past seven years has been to vastly increase social inequality. During the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires surged past $7 trillion and the top 1 percent now controls half of the world’s wealth. In the US, the scale of social inequality—and therefore political inequality—is so great that one recent scientific study concluded that “the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt.”

THE GLOBAL ECONOMY PAYS THE ULTIMATE PRICE FOR THE LOOTING OF OBAMA - CLINTONS' CRONY BANKSTERS!

"The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs."

"This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery."

"On the economic front there are two sources of this mounting disquiet: First, the fact that despite the pouring of trillions of dollars into the global financial system by the world’s major central banks, recessionary tendencies are gathering momentum. Second, that, in Rachman’s words, “there is… a widespread fear that, after years of unorthodox monetary policy, another financial or economic crisis might be building."“As a result, the share of wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent of the population grew from 17 percent in 2007 to 22 percent in 2012, while the wealth of the 400 richest families in the US has doubled since 2008.”

A New Year’s sense of foreboding over the global economy

30 December 2015

Since the eruption of the global financial crisis seven years ago, it has been commonplace for bourgeois commentators to end each year with predictions of better economic times ahead. Not so this time.

Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman summed up the prevailing mood in a comment this week. “In 2015,” he wrote, “a sense of unease and foreboding seemed to settle on all the world’s major power centres. From Beijing to Washington, Berlin to Brasilia, Moscow to Tokyo—governments, media and citizens were jumpy and embattled.”

On the economic front there are two sources of this mounting disquiet: First, the fact that despite the pouring of trillions of dollars into the global financial system by the world’s major central banks, recessionary tendencies are gathering momentum. Second, that, in Rachman’s words, “there is… a widespread fear that, after years of unorthodox monetary policy, another financial or economic crisis might be building.”

The predominant economic development in 2015 has been the deepening trend towards global recession. At its meeting in October, the International Monetary Fund forecast the lowest rate of global economic growth since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis and warned that it could further downwardly revise its estimates.

The myth, assiduously promoted for a number of years, that China and the emerging market economies would provide a new foundation for global capitalism was finally buried this year, as China experienced its lowest growth levels since the early 1990s. Rather than provide a new base for expansion, the mounting problems in the Chinese economy, exemplified by the Chinese stock market crash over the summer and the devaluation of the renminbi, are negatively impacting the rest of the world, with major economic and political consequences.

The “left” turn in Latin American politics has come to an end as the boom fuelled by exports to Chinese markets has given way to recession. Brazil, once seen as a source of economic expansion, along with the other members of the BRICS group of countries, has been plunged into recession. Its economy contracted 4.5 percent in the last quarter in the biggest downturn since the 1930s Depression. This contraction has intensified its financial problems. November’s figures for the increase in Brazil’s public debt were the third highest on record.

The effects of slower growth in China are extending to the advanced capitalist economies. Canada, which is highly dependent on exports to China, has, with the announcement that the economy contracted in October, experienced negative or stagnant growth in seven of the first ten months of the year.

Falling iron ore export revenue, the result of the Chinese slowdown, is causing major fiscal problems for the Australian federal government as well as the states. In its latest budget update, the Turnbull government announced that it expected to lose another $7 billion in revenue over the next four years as compared to estimates made just last May, largely as a result of falling ore prices. These are now below $40 per tonne, compared to $180 per tonne four years ago. The once boom state of Western Australia has announced its biggest income fall since the Great Depression due to lost revenue from the mining industry.

For some time the US was touted as a bright spot in the world economy. To the extent that this is still the case, it only underscores the dismal situation everywhere else. US wages remain stagnant, economic growth remains well below levels achieved in all previous post-war recoveries, and industrial output is falling, with warnings that the sector has entered a recession.

The euro zone has yet to recover the levels of output reached before the beginning of the financial crisis, with no signs of any revival of investment.

One of the most prominent indicators of the onset of global recession is the precipitous fall in the prices of all industrial commodities. The Bloomberg Commodity index of 22 raw materials has fallen to its lowest level since the financial crisis.

While the plunge in the price of oil—down from its levels of around $100 per barrel in the middle of last year to just $36—has attracted the most attention, it is only the most prominent expression of a general tendency. Iron prices continue to fall, accompanied by precipitous declines in other metals associated with basic industry.

At the beginning of this year, the price of nickel, which is used in the manufacture of stainless steel, was expected to rise by 22 percent. It has fallen by more than 40 percent, a bigger decline than the collapse suffered by oil. Likewise, the price of zinc, which was predicted to rise by 16 percent, has dropped by 28 percent.

When the oil price began to fall, the view was advanced that this could be beneficial to the world economy by reducing energy costs. But any positive effects have been completely outweighed by the deepening slump. In an indication of future trends, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries lowered its long-term estimates for global oil demand and said oil prices would not return to the level of $100 per barrel until 2040 at the earliest.

The falling oil price has sent a shock wave through financial markets, hitting high-yield or so-called “junk” bonds as well as mutual funds that have invested in energy-related projects. With money available at ultra-low interest rates and oil fetching more than $100 per barrel, there was money aplenty for speculation. But with oil at below $40, many of these projects are unviable.

Mutual funds that invested in pipelines and other infrastructure projects have also been adversely affected. According to one analyst cited by the Financial Times: “These funds have never gone through the kind of energy price crash that we have had this year.”

The problems could extend more broadly to US banks. Wells Fargo, one of America’s largest banks, has already warned that low oil prices mean exploration companies and oil producers may not be able to repay their loans. It has been estimated by US regulators that there are five times as many oil and gas loans in danger of default than there were a year ago.

When the financial crisis broke in 2008-2009, the air was filled with talk of coordination and cooperation among the major capitalist powers. That has already gone by the board and the past year has seen growing divergences.

There is a rift in the policies of the world’s central banks, with the US Fed starting to lift rates while the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan hold rates near zero and continue to pump money into the financial system.

While a façade of unity is maintained, divisions are deepening, especially as regards China. In March, there was a conflict between the US and Britain when the Cameron government, acting on behalf of British financial interests, defied US opposition and announced it was signing on to the Chinese-backed Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, opening the way for other European powers to join.
A new conflict has now opened up, with the US reported to be lobbying to prevent the European powers, with Britain and Germany playing a key role, granting China market economy status under the World Trade Organisation (WTO). If China were so designated, it would further open up the world market to its exports. US officials have denounced the move as an attempt by European powers to win the support of Beijing as they seek profitable outlets for euro investments.

Widening rifts were also in evidence with the effective burial of the Doha Round of trade negotiations at the WTO talks in Nairobi earlier this month. This was chiefly at the instigation of the US, which is abandoning the pursuit of multilateral trade deals in favour of exclusive agreements, such as the Trans Pacific Partnership covering Asia and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership covering Europe, in which trade concessions are not extended to all but only to those countries agreeing to Washington’s demands.

The implications for the international working class of the deepening crisis are further austerity coupled with intensifying attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions.

Euro zone economists polled by the Financial Times this week set out the agenda with a call for a renewed push on so-called “structural reforms” of the labour market—the scrapping of remaining regulations governing wages and working conditions—aimed at nothing less than the creation of an impoverished cheap labour force.

Economic developments in 2015 have again underscored the fact that the crisis of 2008 signified a breakdown of the global capitalist system, not a downturn from which there would be a “recovery.” The coming year will bring a stepping up of the assault carried out over the past seven years. It can be met only through a political movement of the working class based on an international socialist program.

The biggest single tax dodger is tech giant Apple, which has avoided paying $59.2 billion in US taxes through stashing $181.1 billion offshore, much of it hidden in Ireland.

WHY OBAMA'S CRONY BANKSTERS HAVE INVESTED SO MUCH IN HILLARY

"Their research shows that the average Wall Street salary has gone from just under $50,000 in 1981 to over $350,000 in 2012. Today there are about two times as many “financial professionals” in the top 1 percent of US income earners as there were in 1979, and about 1 in 5 members of the richest .1 percent of Americans “work” in finance.

America’s richest 400 households paid a 16.7 percent tax rate in 2012

By Tom Eley 4 January 2016

In 2012, the top 400 U.S. taxpayers—those who took home more than $100 million—paid an effective tax rate of under 16.7 percent. These 400 households collectively comprise 0.0001 percent of taxpayers, but accounted, by themselves, for roughly 1.5 percent of all income.

In 2013 George W. Bush-era tax cuts expired, increasing the capital gains tax upward from 15 percent to 23 percent, which drove the effective tax rate for the super-rich up to 22.9 percent—still far lower than the statutory marginal rate of 39.6 percent that is supposed to be paid on incomes of over $415,000.

Anticipating the change, which was the result of a deal worked out between Republicans and the White House early in the Obama administration in order to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the super-rich “sold assets before the deadline to avoid higher taxes, leading to a huge surge in income in late 2012,” notes the Wall Street Journal. In that bonanza year the average income of the top 400 taxpayers was $336 million—$70 million more than in 2013.

The effective tax rate for the super-rich is lower than the statutory marginal rate imposed on working class families. Single workers pay a tax rate of 25 percent, after payroll deductions, for income of over $36,000; for single workers who earn more than $88,000, the income tax rate rises to 39.6 percent

How is it that the super-rich pay a lower tax rate than many working class Americans? Put simply, it is because the rich don’t work. Tax rates on income generated in dividends and capital gains—profits gained by stock market performance and by flipping property such as securities and large real estate holdings—are far lower than they are on tax rates imposed on labor.

In 2013, the 400 richest individual taxpayers received, by themselves, 5.3 percent of the entire national income in dividends, and 11.2 percent of all income derived from capital sales. For 2012, the same group accounted for 8.34 percent of taxable dividends and 12.26 percent of capital gains. Had these profits been taxable at the rate of salary or wages, super-wealthy taxpayers would have seen their tax liability more than doubled.

The super-rich’s efforts to avoid taxes have created an industry in itself, a December 29 analysis in the New York Times points out. “[T]he very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes,” write authors Noam Scheiber and Patricia Cohen. “Some call it the ‘income defense industry,’ consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.”

Among the tax-dodge mechanisms used by the top 400, according to the Times, are “convoluted partnerships and high-end investment funds,” “opaque family trusts,” and “foreign shell corporations.” But the basic strategy is to convert “one type of income into another type that’s taxed at a lower rate.”

As one example, the Times cites hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb, who “has invested in a Bermuda-based reinsurer—an insurer to insurance companies—that turns around and invests the money in his hedge fund. That maneuver transforms his profits from short-term bets in the market, which the government taxes at roughly 40 percent, into long-term profits, known as capital gains, which are taxed at roughly half that rate. It has had the added advantage of letting Mr. Loeb defer taxes on this income indefinitely, allowing his wealth to compound and grow more quickly.”

There is also the tried-and-true tax shelter known as “philanthropy.” The top 400 taxpayers account for, by themselves, 6 percent of all tax deductions claimed for charitable donations.

The exploitation of the US tax system by the mega-wealthy is surpassed only by tax cheating by the firms they control. According to an October, 2015 report by the PIRG Education Fund and Citizens For Tax Justice, the vast majority of America’s Fortune 500 hid profits in offshore tax havens in 2014—especially the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. These companies, the report concludes, reported an accumulated $2.1 trillion in offshore income solely for tax avoidance purposes. Fortune 500 corporations likely have dodged $620 billion in federal income taxes on these offshore profits, the study concludes—a figure about 8 times greater than Obama’s proposed spending on education in the 2016 federal budget.

The claim that such profits are actually “earned” in these Caribbean island statelets is absurd on its face. US Fortune 500 profits in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands amount “to 1,643 percent and 1,600 percent respectively of each country’s entire GDP,” the report notes.

The biggest single tax dodger is tech giant Apple, which has avoided paying $59.2 billion in US taxes through stashing $181.1 billion offshore, much of it hidden in Ireland.

So effective are US corporations at dodging the federal statutory corporate rate of
35 percent, that their effective tax rate now stands at roughly 17 percent, according to data compiled by economist Gabriel Zucman in his recent book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations.

US corporations are leading the way in a global phenomenon of tax dodging. Zucman uses a simple method to demonstrate that there are trillions of dollars in hidden wealth circulating in the global economy. Mathematically, financial liabilities should be cancelled out by assets for a net zero, and vice versa. But Zucman found that reported liabilities, globally, are $6 trillion larger than reported assets. He concludes the disparity is owed largely to money hidden in tax havens.

The super-rich and their corporations achieve these ends through domination of the US political system. As recently as December 18, a year-end fiscal package was signed into law by President Obama that included another $383 billion in tax cuts for corporations and businesses. Meanwhile, in the coming decade, federal spending is expected to decline by $8 trillion—much of it owed to cuts in health care and social spending. However, these “savings” will be largely offset by… declining tax revenue, meaning that the federal deficit will still grow by $7.7 trillion, according to 2014 projections by the Senate Budget Committee.

Both parties are fully in the service of the super-rich. The Times notes that the heads of various hedge funds favor, alternatively, Republican and Democratic candidates. James Simon gives to Democrats. Robert Mercer gives to Republicans. Simon’s hedge fund, currently under investigation by the IRS, is managed by Mercer. George Soros gives millions to Democrats, and claims taxes should be raised on the wealthy, even as his $24.5 billion hedge fund exploits tax loopholes. He and his hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller give hundreds of thousands to Republicans.

The current state of affairs is the outcome of a longer process. In 1961, the high-end marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans stood at 91 percent. The liberal administrations of Democrats John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, responding to the first signs that the post-World War II global economic system was failing, reduced the tax rate of the top income bracket to 75 percent, and also cut corporate taxes from their statutory rate of 50 percent.

The assumption was that the rich and corporations would redirect this cash into investment. Instead, the tax cuts set the stage for the mergers and acquisitions wave of the late 1960s, and accelerated the outflow from the US economy of dollars that found more profitable returns overseas, exacerbating the underlying crisis of the Breton Woods system, by which the dollar was convertible to gold at the fixed rate of $35 per ounce.

The shift away from commodity production and toward parasitic financial speculation, at a certain point, went from being a policy error to a policy goal. A milepost was passed in 1979 when Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker, Democrat Jimmy Carter’s appointee, raised the Fed’s benchmark overnight bank lending rate past 20 percent, redirecting investment from basic industry to finance.
The finance industry—which makes nothing tangible and whose principal “service” is simply the movement of money—has doubled its share of the US economy in the past half century, and, over the past 30 years, it has grown at a rate six times as fast as the rest of the economy—decades that correspond to a dramatic polarization of wealth in the US. All of this has been facilitated by the tax policies implemented by presidents, senators and congressmen of both parties.

“Lawmakers kept encouraging financial innovation,” the Washington Post noted in a recent analysis. “They did that by… loosening restrictions on the kinds of financial activities that the titans of Wall Street could engage in.” “Financial innovation” is, of course, a euphemism for swindling.
According to economists Thomas Philippon and Ariel Reshef, until the early 1980s Wall Street bankers were paid no more than other private sector professionals. Their research shows that the average Wall Street salary has gone from just under $50,000 in 1981 to over $350,000 in 2012. Today there are about two times as many “financial professionals” in the top 1 percent of US income earners as there were in 1979, and about 1 in 5 members of the richest .1 percent of Americans “work” in finance.

This has not been a socially neutral process. The growth of “complex financial products has served primarily to boost income for the firms themselves” Philippon’s research shows.

According to another recent study carried out by economists at Harvard and the University of Chicago, every dollar doled out to Wall Street executives actually makes the US economy 60 cents worse off.

Obama Floods The U.S. Job Market With Foreign Competition Investors Business Daily, December 31, 2015

Politics: Skirting Congress once again, President Obama seeks to admit another 100,000 foreigners to work here when jobs are few and labor-market participation is low. Whatever this is, it's not in the interest of U.S. workers.
This time, the president isn't seeking to flood the country with tens of thousands of indigent, border-surging migrants in search of bigger benefits packages.

Instead, he plans to award via executive order work permits to 100,000 foreign college grads (including deportable aliens) to compete with U.S. workers for jobs.
. . .
The move is especially nefarious not just because it stands as another example of executive overreach but also because foreign workers already have U.S. workers at a disadvantage.

For one thing, they're able to work cheaper. Unlike Americans, most have had free tuition rides from their sponsoring countries and carry no student loan debt. This enables them to tolerate lower wages than American grads saddled with high loan costs that can't be shirked even in bankruptcy court.

The foreigners are also exempt from ObamaCare rules that can add as much as $20,000 in costs per domestic worker for employers struggling to compete in the low-growth economy that Obama has overseen.

President Obama is dropping a New Year’s Eve bomb on the nation’s best and brightest workers.

What can be done to stop this?

As I noted on Twitter two weeks ago, a new bill co-sponsored by longtime reformer Sen. Jeff Sessions and GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz would not only restore U.S. worker protections in the flawed H-1B program, but would also prevent “continued use of the non-statute-based Optional Practical Training (OPT) Program, and the creation and use of other similar programs, which have also been used to displace American workers under the guise of student training.”

Good to know there are at least two Senators on Capitol Hill who aren’t snoozing while President Obama tries to throw U.S. high-skilled workers and talented U.S. college grads under the bus in the dark of the last night of 2015.

"In the sphere of world economy, any expectation of an upturn has given way to the reality of permanent crisis. In the United States, six years into the so-called economic “recovery,” real unemployment remains at near-record highs, wages are under attack, and health care and pensions for millions of Americans are being wiped out."

"The essential and intended consequence of government policy over the past seven years has been to vastly increase social inequality. During the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires surged past $7 trillion and the top 1 percent now controls half of the world’s wealth. In the US, the scale of social inequality—and therefore political inequality—is so great that one recent scientific study concluded that “the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt."326,000 Native-Born Americans Lost Their Job in November: Why This Remains the Most Important Jobs Chart By Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge.com, December 5, 2015
. . .
We are confident that one can make the case that there are considerations on both the labor demand-side (whether US employers have a natural tendency to hire foreign-born workers is open to debate) as well as on the supply-side: it may be easier to obtain wage-equivalent welfare compensation for native-born Americans than for their foreign-born peers, forcing the latter group to be much more engaged and active in finding a wage-paying job.

However, the underlying economics of this trend are largely irrelevant: as the presidential primary race hits a crescendo all that will matter is the soundbite that over the past 8 years, 2.7 million foreign-born Americans have found a job compared to only 747,000 native-born. The result is a combustible mess that will lead to serious fireworks during each and every subsequent GOP primary debate, especially if Trump remains solidly in the lead.

FrontPageMag.com, December 4, 2015
. . .Therefore the Visa Waiver Program should have been terminated after the terror attacks of 9/11 yet it has continually been expanded.

It is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of administrations and many members of Congress, irrespective of political party affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no meaningful action to stop that flow of aliens into the United States.
. . .
The obvious question is why the Visa Waiver Program is considered so sacrosanct that even though it defies the advice and findings of the 9/11 Commission no one has the moral fortitude to call for simply terminating this dangerous program.

The answer can be found in the incestuous relationship between the Chamber of Commerce and its subsidiary, the Corporation for Travel Promotion, now doing business as Brand USA.

The Chamber of Commerce has arguably been the strongest supporter of the Visa Waiver Program, which currently enables aliens from 38 countries to enter the United States without first obtaining a visa.

The U.S. State Department provides a thorough explanation of the Visa Waiver Program on its website.

Surge in Illegal Aliens, 500% Increase in Some U.S. Ports of Entry
Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles, December 30, 2015
. . .
The agency’s own statistics certainly contradict that, showing that the southern border region is as porous and vulnerable as ever. Other entry ports that saw large hikes in Central American illegal immigrants during the first two months of this fiscal year include Del Rio, Texas (269%), El Centro, California (216%) and Rio Grande Valley, Texas (154%). The Border Patrol breaks the stats down by “family unit” and illegal immigrants under the age of 18, referred to as “Unaccompanied Alien Children” or UAC. The Rio Grande Valley port of entry topped the list in both categories with 8,537 family units and 6,465 UACs during the two-month period. In all, the nation’s nine southern border crossings saw an average of 173% increase in family units and a 106% increase in minors during the short period considered.

Some of the illegal immigrants are Mexican nationals, but the overwhelming majority comes from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The government records show that somehow 4,450 family units from El Salvador evaded our topnotch border security and entered the United States in a period of only two months. Guatemala and Honduras had 3,934 and 3,203 respectively. Mexico had 538 family units. Of interesting note is that, during this period, the Border Patrol reports 35,234 apprehensions in the region of foreigners labeled by the government as “Other Than Mexican” or OTM. This is a term used by federal authorities to refer to nationals of countries that represent a terrorist threat to the U.S.
. . .http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/12/surge-in-illegal-aliens-500-increase-in-some-u-s-ports-of-entry/

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Ryan defends raised visa caps in spending bill

Ryan defends raised visa caps in spending bill

Washington Examiner

The Federal Register will publish a new Department of Homeland Security regulation Thursday that instructs the State Department to give millions of employment authorization documents to aliens prior to authorizing green cards.The new regulation was designed to override current visa caps outlined in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952."This is a backdoor plan to circumvent Congress and bust immigration caps, executed during a time of record immigration, lowering wages and eliminating jobs for Americans," an anonymous Senate staffer told the Washington Examiner.The move comes after a discovery earlier this year that the Obama administration had printed up millions of work permits to issue to people who are in the country illegally.

"During the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires surged past $7 trillion and the top 1 percent now controls half of the world’s wealth."Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.

"In the sphere of world economy, any expectation of an upturn has given way to the reality of permanent crisis. In the United States, six years into the so-called economic “recovery,” real unemployment remains at near-record highs, wages are under attack, and health care and pensions for millions of Americans are being wiped out."

"The essential and intended consequence of government policy over the past seven years has been to vastly increase social inequality. During the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires surged past $7 trillion and the top 1 percent now controls half of the world’s wealth. In the US, the scale of social inequality—and therefore political inequality—is so great that one recent scientific study concluded that “the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt."

BLOG: MAY THESE FILTHY SAUDIS ROT WITH ALLAH IN MUSLIM HELL!THE SAUDIS WHORE MONGERS - THEY COUNT IN THEIR HEREM GEORGE BUSH, HILLARY AND BILLARY AND BARACK OBAMA.. watch the dirty Saudis money pour into the presidential libraries and phony foundations these pol criminals operate!More generally, the whore-masters and parasites who make up Saudi Arabia’s ruling family fear that conditions are building up for a social explosion that could land them in the same spot as previous royal houses, with their own heads on the chopping block. The plummeting of oil prices, itself a product of the decision, backed by Washington, to reject any reduction in output—with the aim of undermining the economies of both Russia and Iran—is beginning to take its toll on the Saudi economy itself.

In the final analysis, any policy that is predicated on an alliance with the House of Saud is a house of cards that will come crashing down with the revival of the class struggle in the Middle East.

The mass beheadings in Saudi Arabia

4 January 2016

Washington’s closest ally in the Arab world, the dictatorial monarchy of Saudi Arabia, ushered in the New Year with a torrent of blood, simultaneously executing 47 prisoners.

This wave of state murders unfolded at 12 separate prisons across the kingdom. At eight of them, the condemned were beheaded, while at four others they were cut down by firing squads. The headless corpses were then crucified and left hanging in public as a hideous warning to any who would even contemplate opposing the absolute power of the ruling royal family.

The most prominent of those put to death was Nimr al-Nimr, a Muslim cleric and leading spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s oppressed Shiite minority. Nimr, who was interrogated under torture and then brought before a kangaroo court, was convicted on charges that included “disobeying the ruler” and “encouraging, leading and participating in demonstrations.”

These “crimes” stemmed from the mass protests that swept Saudi Arabia’s predominantly Shiite Eastern Province in 2011, expressing popular demands for democratic reforms and an end to the Sunni monarchy’s discrimination and oppression of the Shiite population.

Three other Shiite prisoners were executed alongside Nimr, including one who was a minor at the time of his alleged offense. The rest of those put to death were Sunnis accused of involvement in Al Qaeda attacks that took place in Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006.

The barbaric killing spree carried out by the regime in Riyadh was a calculated political act driven by both domestic and international objectives. The Saudi monarchy joined the execution of Nimr with those of the alleged Al Qaeda members to drive home its identification of any opposition to its rule as an act of terrorism. In the first instance, its aim is to intimidate the Shiite minority, which constitutes approximately 15 percent of the population and is concentrated in the Eastern Province, a key oil-producing region.

At the same time, the House of Saud was sending a bloody signal that it will ruthlessly suppress any attempt to bring home the kind of Islamist terrorism it has fomented, funded and ideologically inspired elsewhere, with particularly horrific effect in Syria. The monarchy is increasingly fearful that it could fall prey to the Frankenstein monster it has unleashed in the form of groups such as ISIS and the Al Nusra Front, whose Wahabi religious ideology and mass beheadings are modeled after the state terror imposed in Saudi Arabia itself.

More generally, the whore-masters and parasites who make up Saudi Arabia’s ruling family fear that conditions are building up for a social explosion that could land them in the same spot as previous royal houses, with their own heads on the chopping block. The plummeting of oil prices, itself a product of the decision, backed by Washington, to reject any reduction in output—with the aim of undermining the economies of both Russia and Iran—is beginning to take its toll on the Saudi economy itself.

At the end of last year, the Saudi regime revealed that it had run a $98 billion budget deficit in 2015 and was anticipating a similar shortfall this year. In a desperate attempt to raise revenue, it has imposed a 50 percent increase on gas prices and is embarking on further cuts in public spending, particularly the economic subsidies that have allowed the large impoverished layers of Saudi society to eke out a living. The Financial Times described the new budget as an exercise in “radical austerity.”

Under these conditions, the sharp rise in beheadings—at least 158 people were killed in this manner in 2015—is intended to serve as a means of mass intimidation.

On the international front, the state murder of Sheikh Nimr represents a calculated provocation, designed to radically intensify sectarian strife throughout the region. It is aimed at provoking Iran, whose Shiite Muslim leadership responded with warnings of “divine vengeance.” The execution triggered demonstrations that included firebomb attacks on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and a consular facility in the Iranian city of Mashhad. Riyadh has responded by severing diplomatic relations.

The Saudi monarchy is determined to blow up any attempt to end the civil war in Syria without first achieving the original aim of it and its Western allies—regime-change. By exacerbating tensions with Iran, the principal ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Saudis hope to prevent any such settlement and to create the conditions for war with Iran itself.

In what is hardly a coincidence, on the same day as the mass executions, Riyadh announced an end to a supposed cease-fire in Yemen, where the Saudi military has led an illegal and deadly intervention aimed at suppressing a revolt by the Houthis, an insurgent movement whose members are drawn from the Shia population.

The execution of the Saudi Shiite cleric is designed to widen an already spiraling regional conflict in the Middle East. Like the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, it is an event with the potential of ultimately drawing the major powers into a far bloodier global conflagration.
The main responsibility for the crimes of the Saudi regime rests with its principal patron, US imperialism. The savage monarchy in Saudi Arabia is not merely some remnant of feudal backwardness. It is rather the direct product of US imperialist intervention in the Middle East, from the concessions secured by Texaco and Standard Oil in the 1930s and 1940s to the current massive arms sales that make the Saudi monarchy today’s number one customer of America’s military-industrial complex.

Washington has responded to the mass beheadings in Saudi Arabia as an event of little consequence, having nothing to do with the policies of the US itself. Both the White House and the State Department issued mealy-mouthed statements “reaffirming” pro forma calls for the Saudi regime to respect human rights but making no direct condemnation of the political murder of Sheikh Nimr.
The Pentagon and the CIA are full partners in the Saudi monarchy’s repression at home, while the US has provided the bombs and targeting information, along with the midair refueling of Saudi bombers, that have made possible the nine-month war in Yemen—a criminal aggression that has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians while turning hundreds of thousands more into homeless refugees.
The blood-soaked Saudi monarchy is a manifestation of the predatory policy pursued by US imperialism in the Middle East. Washington’s defense of and reliance upon this ultra-reactionary regime expose all of the pretexts given for the successive US military interventions in the region, from the so-called “war on terrorism” to the supposed promotion of “democracy” and “human rights.”

In the final analysis, any policy that is predicated on an alliance with the House of Saud is a house of cards that will come crashing down with the revival of the class struggle in the Middle East.